The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Many data centers are now implemented across multiple sites to address IP mobility, disaster recovery, scaling, and redundancy concerns. Some sites are being implemented using non-blocking switch architectures, such as Clos networks. With Clos network topology, each site typically includes spine switches connected to a larger number of leaf switches, with each leaf switch being connected to physical servers that each host virtual servers/endpoints. As one example, a site may be comprised of one or more PODs, where each POD includes approximately 8-16 spine switches that are connected to approximately 500-1000 leaf switches. With each physical server hosting approximately 20 virtual servers, each leaf switch is connected to approximately 1000-2000 virtual servers/endpoints. The sites are connected using a data center interconnect (DCI) strategy, such as Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN), which creates a Layer 2 logical network on top of Layer 3 using encapsulation to support traffic between the sites.
One of the issues with multi-site data centers is how to secure communications between sites. Existing key distribution and management mechanisms, such as the IEEE's Media Access Control Security (MACsec) standard, are control plane-based and only suitable for devices deployed in a Layer 2 network. They are not well suited for providing key distribution and management for multi-site data centers that use Layer 3 networks to provide communication between sites.